RSS Feed
TwitterMADDOW: I offer absolutely no editorial content whatsoever. I will tell you what we know, and I will not venture any speculation whatsoever as to what explains what we know. As to what explains what I'm about to tell you, OK? About three years ago, August 20th , 2007 , a man and his daughter were walking on the beach of Jedediah Island which is just northwest of Vancouver . On the beach, the girl found a running shoe , she looked inside the running shoe and found, I'm sorry to say, the remains of a human foot. It was a size 12 men's shoe, it was a right foot. Here is a picture of the shoe in question. But I'm just going to put this shoe here on the desk to represent what happened there. You will understand why in just a second. Less than a week after this shoe, well, this representational shoe, was found on Jedediah Island , same thing happened again. Now, feet tend to come in pairs, so you're thinking, hey, Maddow , it's not that weird that the second foot was found a few days after the first one was found. But here's the problem. The second foot was also a right foot. It was found on Gabriola Island , not far from foot one, six days after the first foot was found. It was also a right foot, also wearing a sneaker, also a size 12, but this time it was wearing a Reebok . This is not a Rebook , but this is the representation. So what we've got now in the space of a week is two right feet, foot one and foot two. Five and a half months later, in February of 2008 , foot three is found, just south of foot two, on Valdez Island . This one is wearing a size 11 man's Nike sneaker. And, yes, this one is also a right foot. So now we're talking three feet, all found in a six-month period, all very near each other, and they're all right feet. Three and a half months after foot three was found, hello, foot four, this one was found on Kirkland Island at the mouth of the Frazier River South of Vancouver in late 2008 . This one, foot four, yes, also a right foot. But this one, for the first time , was wearing a woman's shoe, a woman's size seven New Balance . Now, less than a month later, we got our first left foot, it's wearing a male size 11 Nike , it's also found at the mouth of a Frazier River but on a different island called Westham Island . So, at this point, we've got four right feet, one, two, three, four, and one left foot. Feet one through four are right foot, foot five is left. Now, here's where it gets weird. Weirder. Just two days after foot five was found, there is another finding, also in that part of British Columbia , they think that it is foot number six. OK? Right foot, male size 10, Adidas sneaker fits the profile. Only, it turns out it is a hoax. Someone put an animal paw and a bunch of seaweed into a shoe and laced it up, it is not a human foot. So, that was just fake foot number six. Real foot number six turns up a month and a half later, in early August 2008 . It is the first one found on the Washington State side of the border, just west of Port Angeles . It is another right foot wearing a Levi 's tube sock and a size 11 Everest brand hiking shoe. We're now up to sixth feet and rising. Now, the month after foot six in the hiking shoe, someone put a fake plastic foot into a shoe. A fake plastic foot into a shoe, and left it on a beach in East Vancouver but it was a fake plastic foot. So that one does not count as foot number seven. Real foot number seven turned up back on the Canadian side of the boarder in Richmond, British Columbia , around election time 2008 , November 2008 , another left foot in a women's running shoe . Foot eight, that's foot eight, right? Foot eight turned up last October in the same area, Richmond , B.C. , this one was another right foot wearing a size 8 1/2 Nike . So minus the hoaxes, we're now up to eight feet, all wearing shoes, six right feet, and two left feet. This weekend, we learned about foot number nine. This one found on Whidbey Island in Washington State . So, allow us to compete our understanding here of the found feet, nine of them. See detail about foot number nine? No shoe. It's a right foot. No shoe, though. So, there's this -- there are two other things I need to tell you about this, so you can do your own figuring because, as I said I refuse to speculate about what any of this means. First thing, I need to tell you about is this, foot one was matched to a man who is dead. A man who went missing in 2007 . It has been matched to a known but dead man. Foot three and foot five, they match, see, they match. They belong to one man, a man who wore size 11 Nikes but who otherwise remains a mystery, but they've been accounted for. Foot four and foot seven, also match. They belong to one woman who is dead, and whose identity is known. So if you take those out of the mix, there remain foot two, foot six, the one in the hiking shoe, foot eight, and the new one, foot nine, the shoeless one, which I feel gross about, but there you have it. These are the ones that are unaccounted for and that match no other found feet. That's one thing I needed to explain. About the matching. So there's sort of out of contention. Here's the other thing you need to know. For all of these nine feet, found without bodies, there is also one body that has been found that has no feet. This Toronto Star article gets -- there we go, there's the map of where they all are, Toronto Star article on this subject, it's right to the point on the footless body. The headline from the Toronto Star on this is, now there's a body with no feet. A body found right in the same area of all of these -- of all of these feet being found, it's found on Orcas Island in Washington State , and it was found there five months before the first foot turned up. At this point, nobody seems to be able to tell me if the man with no feet is thought to match any of the feet with no man. I can tell you that heads, hands and feet are the things that are most expected to fall off when a body is in a water for a long time. I can tell you that many running shoes float. I can tell you that some of the feet are said to have been naturally disarticulated from the body and some are not described that way, but I cannot tell you anything about the story because, yes, wow, I can't believe we're talking nine feet. Nine! Discuss amongst yourself. That does
Showing posts with label Another. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Another. Show all posts
1:48 AM
gtventic
12:05 AM
gtventic
Beyonce is pregnant and her focus is on her first child with Jay-Z amidst rumors that a party planner and music video director was trying to lure away her husband from her.
Beyonce surprised everyone after she publicly showed off her baby bump at the MTV Video Music Awards in Los Angeles last Sunday night.
The 29-year-old pop superstar meets her target of getting pregnant by the time she turns 30. It will be the first child for Beyonce and Jay-Z after 3 years of marriage.
According to reports, the party planner, Vashtei Kola, was being linked to Jay-Z after she reportedly had some business dealings with him and “told” friends she was trying to lure away Beyonce‘s man.
But the power couple are happily married for 3 years and now that they are expecting their first child, rumors like this just won’t affect them a bit, according to a veteran Beyonce-Jay-Z source.
Filed Under: NewsTagged: Get updated with the hottest entertainment news daily by email!Follow Starmometer on Twitter and Facebook!
5:22 AM
gtventic
Another life was claimed by the deadly brain-eating amoeba called Naegleria fowleri.
According to public health officials, three people are now dead. The last one was a man from Louisiana who is in his early 20s who died after rinsing his sinuses with tap water.
News of his death comes following the two other highly-publicized fatalities of a 9-year-old Virginia boy and a 16-year-old Florida girl. Those two died after contracting meningoencephalitis following swims in stagnant water where the killer bug, known as Naegleria fowler, is thought to thrive.
Naegleria fowleri is a free-living excavate form of protist typically found in warm bodies of fresh water, such as ponds, lakes, rivers, and hot springs. It is also found in soil, near warm water discharges of industrial plants, and minimally chlorinated swimming pools in an amoeboid or temporary flagellate stage. There is no evidence of this organism living in ocean water. It belongs to a group called the Percolozoa or Heterolobosea. Although not a true amoeba, the organism is often referred to as an amoeba for convenience.
10:56 AM
gtventic
Cumberland County likes to say it has "More to offer!" but not in the way one elected official offered it via a sext message.
Parents, stop worrying about your kids and cellphones: It's time to take them away from politicians. Yet another has been revealed as revealing himself in cellphone photos he sent to a woman he says he "never met personally."
Louis Magazzu, a New Jersey Democrat, Tuesday resigned his elected seat as one of seven freeholders for Cumberland County, a day before the photos were posted on what has been described by the New York Daily News as a "Republican activist's" website, MagazzuWatch.com.
Magazzu, 53 and a father of five, issued a lengthy resignation letter, which read in part:
Unfortunately, in my personal life, I did not always demonstrate the wisdom and balance that I expected from myself, and that the people of Cumberland County deserve and have every right to expect.
As a consequence, a woman who I have never met personally, but have corresponded with on the internet for several years, has recently shared some photographs which she requested and that were intended only for her eyes. I did not know that she was working with an avowed political enemy to distribute these pictures. I have retained counsel to determine what laws may have been broken by the unauthorized distribution of those pictures. No government services or equipment were used by me when taking the pictures or transmitting them to the woman in question.
It's bad enough that this happened less than two months after Anthony Weiner, former New York congressman, resigned after admitting he'd sent lewd photos of himself via Twitter, then lied about it.
But, as New York Magazine noted: "Middle-aged men in positions of power just cannot stop photographing themselves in the nude."
Related stories:
Check out Technolog, Gadgetbox, Digital Life and In-Game on Facebook, and on Twitter, follow Suzanne Choney.
12:42 PM
gtventic
28 July 2011 Last updated at 21:01 GMT 
Madoff is serving a 150-year jail term for his massive fraud A trustee charged with recovering money for victims of Bernard Madoff's massive fraud scheme says he has secured more than $1bn (£610m) from investment funds which placed money with the fraudster.
Madoff is serving a 150-year jail term for his massive fraud A trustee charged with recovering money for victims of Bernard Madoff's massive fraud scheme says he has secured more than $1bn (£610m) from investment funds which placed money with the fraudster.Irving Pickering said the total money recovered now stands at $8.6bn.
Among those funds that settled was New York-based Tremont Group, regarded as a feeder fund for Madoff.
Madoff is serving 150 years in jail in the US for a $65bn fraud which hit thousands of investors' savings.
The so-called Ponzi scheme used new members' money rather than profits to pay returns to existing investors.
The scheme had been running since the early 1990s.
It unravelled when Madoff's investors, hit by the economic downturn, tried to withdraw about $7bn, but he could not produce the money.
11:20 AM
gtventic
An honest man in a city of thieves, Kandahar mayor Ghulam Haider Hamidi once exemplified hopes that the U.S.-led nation-building effort would leave behind a better Afghanistan. His killing by a suicide bomber on Wednesday, less than two weeks after the slaying of Kandahar's strongman provincial council chairman Ahmed Wali Karzai, underscores the declining prospects of the Western military mission there. His killing by a suicide bomber on Wednesday, less than two weeks after the slaying of Kandahar's strongman governor Mohammed Wali Karzai, underscores the declining prospects of the Western military mission there.
"More than 50 percent of the violence comes from these corrupt people, the ones who sit with you and smile," Hamidi told the Washington Post earlier this year. The former accountant had returned to Kandahar in 2007 after 30 years in the United States. Having been invited to serve as mayor by his childhood friend Afghan President Hamid Karzai, Hamidi said goodbye to the comfort of his northern Virginia home and threw himself into the maelstrom of the southern Afghan city's politics. He initiated a slew of projects - from paving roads, collecting taxes and building schools - intended to revitalize the city, and made a name for himself trying to root out graft and curb the power of local strongmen and warlords on whom he blamed Kandahar's ills. (See photos from the battle in Kandahar.)
Some of the enemies he made in the course of trying to clean up Kandahar appear to have caught up with him Wednesday. Clashes had erupted in the city Tuesday afternoon, with police accused of accidentally shooting three children as bulldozers moved in to demolish houses built illegally on government land. The following morning Hamidi met with elders who had come to protest. He heard their grievances in the corridor outside his office. Shortly before 11 a.m. a man stepped out of the crowd, took Hamidi's hand and detonated explosives hidden in his turban. The blast caught Hamidi square in the face, killing him instantly.
The Taliban claimed responsibility for the hit, saying it was to avenge the children killed the previous day. But an official with Afghanistan's secret police offered a more nuanced version of events. "All those illegal houses Hamidi destroyed belonged to powerful [former] jihadi commanders living in the district," the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told TIME. Hamidi had been the first person to stand up to these warlords, the official went on, turfing them off land they'd stolen from the government or the poor. "The warlords didn't like Hamidi, so they turned to the Taliban, who killed him." (See how the Taliban are unleashing a spring offensive in Afghanistan.)
It's a cynical reflection of Kandahari politics that Hamidi survived four years of an escalating Taliban insurgency only to die when he angered commanders whose personal financial interests diverged from those of the government. The episode is also a fitting illustration of Kandahar's war economy, where a murky nexus of insurgents, criminals, strongmen and government officials vie for resources, often with overlapping interests and shifting allegiances.
The killing is also the latest blow to Karzai, who has lost a string of key allies in southern Afghanistan just as NATO looks to start sending its troops home. Last week, gunmen killed Jan Mohammad Khan, a confidante and erstwhile mentor of the president, as he sat down for dinner with a parliamentarian at his villa in Kabul. On July 12, a trusted lieutenant killed Ahmed Wali Karzai, de facto ruler of Kandahar. Both of Hamidi's deputies were assassinated last year, and Kandahar's chief of police was killed in April.
Analysts believe the Taliban intent is to mirror the intensity of Nato's own campaign of 'kill/capture' raids against insurgent commanders. "Partially that has an impact in the battlefield, and partly on morale, and part is also to project a certain position of strength," says Martine van Bijlert of the Afghanistan Analysts Network, a repected Kabul think-tank. (See TIME's video: "A New Season of Fighting in Afghanistan.")
But Hamidi's death has a significance beyond simply reflecting the violent, murky nature of Kandahari politics, or bolstering the Taliban narrative that no government official, no matter how close to Karzai, is safe. Hamidi had been one of the leading contenders to become Kandahar's next governor, a position that would likely convey considerable power. Close to the Karzais, but without a powerbase of his own, he would have been a conduit President Karzai could have used to project his family influence across southern Afghanistan in the absence of Ahmed Wali. Well-connected Kandaharis saw him as a serious contender for the job. His removal from the scene leaves the way open for Gul Agha Sherzai, a strongman who dispenses patronage like an old-fashioned potentate. A nominal Karzai ally, Sherzai is excepted by many observers to direct lucrative NATO contracts and revenues from all manner of formal and informal economic activity towards his own family if he gets the nod, diminishing Karzai's influence in the south.
Hamidi's death, then, is another blow to Karzai's prospects for holding Kandahar once foreign troops leave the southern crucible. But who benefits from that weakening in the long-term may be a question still in play.
See photos of the coalition raid that ended an attack on a Kabul hotel.
See photos of the fight against the Taliban.
View this article on Time.com
Most Popular on Time.com:
12:50 PM
gtventic
Apple
Not even two weeks have passed since Apple issued a security fix for iOS devices and we're already being prompted to update our gadgets again. The latest software download, iOS 4.3.5, is a minor update which fixes yet another rather pesky security vulnerability.
While Apple's description of the security update is a bit vague — it simply explains that if you don't download iOS 4.3.5, "an attacker with a privileged network position may capture or modify data in sessions protected by SSL/TLS" — the folks at Kaspersky Labs were able to clarify things a bit:
[T]he description implies that an attacker who has already compromised a machine on a given network and has the ability to see and identify SSL sessions might be able to decrypt the traffic and modify it. This kind of man-in-the-middle attack is quite common and would require the attacker to already have a foothold on the network in order to execute it.
In plainer words: Someone could intercept your web-surfing session and steal data — but only if he or she already has access to the network you're using.
You can get the update which will foil any plots to compromise your security in such a manner by plugging your iOS device into your computer and hitting the "check for updates" button in iTunes.
Do note that the 4.3.5 version is intended for the AT&T iPhone 4, the iPhone 3GS, the iPad 2, the iPad as well as third and fourth generation iPod Touch devices. Folks who own a Verizon iPhone 4 will find an update labeled 4.2.10instead — but it'll offer the same fix.
Related stories:
Rosa Golijan writes about tech here and there. She's obsessed with Twitter and loves to be liked on Facebook. Oh, and she can be found on Google+, too.
10:24 AM
gtventic
14 July 2011 Last updated at 23:01 GMT 
Viewpoint, by Julie Meyer Chief executive, Ariadne Capital 
Is it 1999 all over again? Are we in a new tech bubble?
Viewpoint, by Julie Meyer Chief executive, Ariadne Capital Is it 1999 all over again? Are we in a new tech bubble? Has the thrill of the new - social media and ubiquitous connectivity - erased our memory of the last tech bubble's burst just over a decade ago?
The stock market flotation of LinkedIn and the excitement around the listing of social-buying website Groupon would seem to suggest that we have got carried away again with the idea of new business models that will change the world forever and create untold wealth in their wake.
At the height of the dotcom boom some 12 years ago, every internet entrepreneur was a market disruptor, applying technology to make everything from entertainment to markets and services more efficient.
Those entrepreneurs were like David with a slingshot, out to slay the FTSE Goliaths: "Watch out established businesses. You won't survive."
Dancing with disruptors The burst of the dotcom bubble dampened a lot of the enthusiasm for internet stocks, but companies who were slow to pay attention to the fact the world had nevertheless changed forever are still feeling the repercussions today.HMV for one, is limping along with an outdated business model. But others have ducked the slingshot that has hobbled the retail music industry and learned instead to dance with their tiny disruptors to create not just new business models, but new business ecosystems.
Think of retailers like Waitrose and Ocado, or price comparison websites, and the major media owners who host their services on their web portals as a new source of revenue to replace advertising.
All throughout the dotcom bust and the financial crisis, broadband and mobile penetration continued to increase. Connectivity became cheap and commoditised, components interlocked and compatibility became the norm.
The world has gone irrevocably network and mobile.
Ecosystem economicsAs a result, very distinct "ecosystems" have emerged during the past half-decade - with companies like Facebook, Apple and Google each commanding the time and attention of millions of users who are also fans.
Microsoft was lagging, but its acquisition of Skype puts it in the camp of "watch this space". Each of these camps are deeply social - there is a network at its core. Each of them has a platform of hundreds of millions of users who access services through the platform.
If I have to predict what is different this time around and who will prosper, I would say the camp that organises the most inclusive set of economics in its ecosystem - that is offering the best incentives to consumers and developers to use their platform - will win.
This is "ecosystem economics". The winners in business are those firms who organise the business model in their industries. Ecosystem economics helps us to see that to win today, you as a business owner need to seek out your natural allies and align interests.
Shared incentives will drive market adoption of your company's service or product.
Of course, there is another major difference this time around. Companies like LinkedIn and Groupon have significant and growing revenues. While these may not entirely support their valuations, they clearly point to the fact that business models plus their understanding of the network-orientation of all business is on the right track.
For those of us who finance entrepreneurship in Europe, what this means is we're mostly going to help build "digital Davids" - companies who understand how to re-organise the economics to create robust and sustainable businesses where everybody wins - customers, retailers and ultimately of course, investors.
So why are firms like Groupon worth billions? How can something as simple as organising a group discount be so powerful?
Because ecosystem economics is at play.
Julie Meyer founded networking group First Tuesday in 1998 during the first internet boom. She now runs Ariadne Capital, a technology-focused investment and advisory firm. Julie Meyer and Ariadne Capital neither have an investment in Groupon nor do they advise the company. Ecosystem economics is a trademark of Ariadne Capital.The opinions expressed are those of the author and are not held by the BBC unless specifically stated. The material is for general information only and does not constitute investment, tax, legal or other form of advice. You should not rely on this information to make (or refrain from making) any decisions. Links to external sites are for information only and do not constitute endorsement. Always obtain independent, professional advice for your own particular situation.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
